$2 Million Payment to Former Lobbyist Raises Eyebrows By Jeffrey H. Birnbaum

You’ve probably never heard of Jeffrey S. Shockey. So, for simplicity’s sake, think of him as the Two Million Dollar Man.

The 40-year-old congressional staffer last year collected nearly $2 million in severance payments from his former employer, a lobbying firm that specializes in winning benefits from the committee he now serves. Many longtime Washingtonians are shaking their heads in disbelief over the payout’s enormous size, its ad hoc method of calculation and the fact that Shockey received it while working as a senior congressional aide. …

Federal employees are prohibited from supplementing their incomes with money from private sources, especially from lobbyists who have business before the government. Shockey says his payment was justified and within the rules. But experienced lobbyists around town question both its economics and its propriety.

The situation is an example of a common occurrence — the spinning of the “revolving door” between the public and private sectors. Shockey is deputy chief of staff of the powerful House Appropriations Committee. Before that he was a partner for five years in a lobbying firm that made its living extracting goodies from the same committee. And before that he worked for Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.), who was then a member of the committee and is now its chairman. …

Lobby shops often give parting gifts to colleagues who go into public service as a way to maintain strong relations. But the amount tends to be nominal and strictly tied to past performance to avoid even the appearance of paying a federal official in exchange for favorable treatment — an exchange that would be illegal.

Why, then, would Shockey’s former firm pay him so much? The reason, several seasoned lobbyists speculated, must have been the firm’s desire to keep its communications with Shockey and the appropriations panel absolutely seamless. “There would be no need to pay out that amount of money unless you needed to maintain a superlative relationship with that person after he leaves,” one veteran lobbyist said. …

Congressional appropriators like Lewis were once hesitant to explicitly fund pet projects for fear of being accused of playing favorites and of micromanaging the government. But that was a long time ago. The Republican Revolution of 1994 ushered in a new congressional majority that professed to be distrustful of government but also worked overtime to maintain its control by directing federal aid into popular programs that would help reelect GOP members. …

Publicity over the investigation has broken up the partnership. The firm’s two Democratic partners, James M. Copeland and Lynnette R. Jacquez, told their Republican colleagues last month that they were leaving. The reason, they said, was that ethical and legal questions threatened to destroy their professional reputations and ruin their commercial prospects.

U.S. Cybersecurity Chief May Have a Conflict of Interest Associated Press

The Bush administration’s cybersecurity chief is a contract employee who earns $577,000 under an agreement with a private university that does extensive business with the federal office he manages.

Donald “Andy” Purdy Jr. has been acting director of the Homeland Security Department’s National Cyber Security Division for 21 months. His two-year contract with Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh has drawn attention from members of Congress. By comparison, the Homeland Security secretary, Michael Chertoff, is paid $175,000 annually.

Purdy is on loan from the school to the government, which is paying nearly all his salary. Meanwhile, Purdy’s cybersecurity division has paid Carnegie Mellon $19 million in contracts this year, almost one-fifth of the unit’s total budget.

Purdy said he has not been involved in discussions of his office’s business deals with the school. “I’m very sensitive to those kinds of requirements,” Purdy said. “It’s not like Carnegie Mellon has ever said to me, ‘We want to do this or that. We want more money.’ ” …

Purdy, a longtime lawyer, has held a number of state and federal legal and managerial jobs. He has no formal technical background in computer security.

The Ties That Bind the Tongue

President Bush , at his news conference yesterday with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi , noted, as he almost always does, “that it was not always a given that the United States and America [sic] would have a close relationship. …”

War of Words on Bank Story By Howard Kurtz, Washington Post Staff Writer

For the Wall Street Journal editorial page, there may be no more juicy target than the liberal press appearing to undermine the Bush administration’s war on terror. …

The problem: The Journal itself had published a front-page story about the classified program on June 23, the same day as the Times.

The Journal’s conservative editorial page weighed in yesterday by arguing that what the two newspapers had done was very different….

The editorial makes clear that the administration handed the Journal the same information that President Bush and Vice President Cheney, among others, have been denouncing the Times for publishing. …

In a Fox News poll released yesterday, 60 percent of those surveyed said the Times did more to help terrorist groups by publishing the information, while 27 percent said the story did more to help the public. Forty-three percent called what the newspapers did treason.

House GOP Chastises Media By Charles Babington, Washington Post Staff Writer

The GOP-crafted resolution, approved 227 to 183, also condemned the unidentified sources who leaked information of the program. It said the House “expects the cooperation of all news media organizations” in protecting the government’s capability “to identify, disrupt, and capture terrorists.” …

Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R-Ariz.) continued to gather signatures on a letter urging House leaders to revoke the credentials that allow New York Times reporters to move about the Capitol. …

Rep. Alcee L. Hastings (D-Fla.) chastised the Republicans. “You know better than to seek to amend the First Amendment,” which protects a free press, he said. He noted that Republicans have vilified the Times, which has a liberal editorial page, but barely mentioned the Wall Street Journal, whose editorial page is conservative.

FBI plans new Net-tapping push | Tech News on ZDNet By Declan McCullagh, CNET News.com

The FBI has drafted sweeping legislation that would require Internet service providers to create wiretapping hubs for police surveillance and force makers of networking gear to build in backdoors for eavesdropping, CNET News.com has learned.

FBI Agent Barry Smith distributed the proposal at a private meeting last Friday with industry representatives and indicated it would be introduced by Sen. Mike DeWine, an Ohio Republican, according to two sources familiar with the meeting. …

Eliminate the current legal requirement saying the Justice Department must publish a public “notice of the actual number of communications interceptions” every year. …

DeWine has relatively low approval ratings–47 percent, according to SurveyUSA.com–and is enmeshed in a fierce battle with a Democratic challenger to retain his Senate seat in the November elections. DeWine is a member of a Senate Judiciary subcommittee charged with overseeing electronic privacy and antiterrorism enforcement and is a former prosecutor in Ohio.